<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Call Me, I'll Come Running by singing_to_empty_caves</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24071260">Call Me, I'll Come Running</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/singing_to_empty_caves/pseuds/singing_to_empty_caves'>singing_to_empty_caves</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>That's What Bein' A Friend Is About [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mother 1 | EarthBound Zero | EarthBound Beginnings, Pikmin (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>it's just the kids playing with some pikmin, so i'm sorry for any errors, this has no real value to the series, this was done in one draft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:02:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,137</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24071260</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/singing_to_empty_caves/pseuds/singing_to_empty_caves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The kids meet some unexpected friends on the muddy trek to Valentine.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ana &amp; Lloyd &amp; Ninten (Mother 1), mother kids &amp; pikmin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>That's What Bein' A Friend Is About [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1524248</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Call Me, I'll Come Running</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainyTazmily/gifts">RainyTazmily</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Let me start by saying that this is NOT the immediate followup to "Maybe Now You Have Figured It Out". It's barely even inside the continuity, to be honest.<br/>Some quick things about Pikmin, since you most likely came from the rest of this Mother series:<br/>1) Pikmin are plant-animal hybrids who reside in sentient ships called Onions. Olimar, the Pikmin protagonist, leads them as a group and assigns them to various tasks; these range from fighting off predators, to gathering materials to grow more Pikmin, to retrieving items for Olimar.<br/>2) Pikmin were scaled up by a LOT for Smash. In this story, they're more the size of GameCube Pikmin (for a quick reference image, Google "pikmin 2 courage reactor").<br/>3) Everything I've written about them comes from Pikmin (2001) and Pikmin 2 (2004). The Pikmin types involved are the standard red/blue/yellow, as well as the purple and white Pikmin that come from Candypop buds in Pikmin 2.<br/>4) Both games involved Pikmin helping Olimar transport items. In the first one, they retrieved parts of his damaged ship; in the second, they helped him gather treasure to pay off a large debt.</p>
<p>There will be more explanation at the end!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lloyd took another hesitant step into the next patch of solid ground he could see… or, at least, he hoped it was solid. When his shoe didn’t sink in, he let out the breath he was holding.</p>
<p>“Ninten, can’t we find another way up?” Ana complained.</p>
<p>“Hey, I’m gettin’ us there, aren’t I? Valentine’s not too far ahead!”</p>
<p>Lloyd’s shoe sunk into the muddy dirt, and he managed to free it with a wet sucking noise and a sigh.</p>
<p>He and Ana had followed Ninten through this seemingly endless swamp for longer than Lloyd cared to think about, and his feet felt wet and slimy from the mud slipping inside his sneakers. This was officially one of the grossest things he’d ever done--and he had plenty of ‘experiments’ that could’ve taken that title.</p>
<p>Ninten suddenly stopped walking, and held out both arms to bar Ana and Lloyd. Startled by the sudden blockage and held in place by the mud, Lloyd almost lost his balance.</p>
<p>“Ninten, what-”</p>
<p>“Do ya see ‘em?”</p>
<p>Lloyd squinted and tried to figure out what Ninten was talking about… all he could see was mud and grass. Occasionally a breeze would--</p>
<p>Hold on. A breeze couldn’t blow such a short flower that far… was it <i>moving?</i></p>
<p>“Hello?” Ninten asked.</p>
<p>All of the tiny white flowers suddenly turned to face away from them. Okay, so they were definitely moving, and responded to noise.</p>
<p>“C’mon, don’t be shy!”</p>
<p>Most of the flowers didn’t move… but one took a few hesitant steps out from the grass. Lloyd realized its stem was a bright red color--that didn’t make sense, and neither did its apparent lack of roots. The flower still faced the opposite direction, even as it approached them. What did that mean?</p>
<p>Ninten crouched down and tilted his head. “Well, who’re you?”</p>
<p>The flower… thing made a curious hum in response.</p>
<p>“So you can talk… okay. You gotta name?”</p>
<p>It let out a thoughtful hum… then a cheerful noise.</p>
<p>Ninten gasped. “Oh, wow! Uh… ‘Mimin’? Is that right?”</p>
<p>The creature (for lack of a better word) insistently repeated its little noise.</p>
<p>“Uh… ‘Mickmin’.”</p>
<p>Ana crouched down next to Ninten. “It sounds more like ‘Pikmin’.”</p>
<p>Suddenly, the whole crowd of flowers repeated “Pikmin!” in unison, and came rushing out of the grass.</p>
<p>“Pikmin!" Ninten laughed. "All right, well, you don’t seem Weird-ified. Lloyd, you ever seen these things before?”</p>
<p>Lloyd didn’t particularly want to get much closer, seeing as there was mud everywhere… but he did have an opportunity to see something new and interesting, and they’d probably be able to wash their clothes in Valentine anyways, so he knelt down to get a closer look.</p>
<p>It seemed there were all kinds of these things, in a variety of colors. Some of them were flowers, but some were only buds, and others were just single leaves. They had… eyes, and noses, and arms and legs. How were they growing flowers on their heads? And how were they loud enough to be heard? They were less than half the length of one of Ninten’s fingers--</p>
<p>“Don’t touch them!” Lloyd scolded, grabbing Ninten’s arm to pull his hand back. The Pikmin stumbled, foiled in their efforts to climb onto his hand.</p>
<p>“Lloyd! They were just curious!” Ninten complained. He shook Lloyd’s hand off his arm.</p>
<p>“Curious for sure,” Ana agreed. “Look at your shoelace, Ninten.”</p>
<p>Sure enough, a couple of the Pikmin had taken to studying the end of his shoelace. One of them, red with a leaf on top, had climbed on top of it and was running its tiny hands over the fibers. The other, purple with a bud--tinted purple as well, curiously enough--had the plastic end in its grip and twisted it in different directions, seemingly enamored.</p>
<p>Then, out of nowhere, the purple Pikmin yanked on the shoelace. Despite its size, it was able to pull the shoelace taut and send the red one flying off.</p>
<p>“Hey! Don’t do that to your friend,” Ninten said to the purple one. Then he held out a finger to the red Pikmin, just as it got back on its feet.</p>
<p>“Ninten,” Lloyd sighed.</p>
<p>The red Pikmin climbed onto Ninten’s finger. It made a panicked noise when he lifted his hand back up, but held its grip right up until Ninten was holding his hand in front of his face.</p>
<p>“Look at you! This is real neat,” Ninten said to the Pikmin. “How come we’ve never seen ya before?”</p>
<p>Rather than answering, the Pikmin got up and walked to Ninten’s knuckle. It tilted its head, then made a noise like it was gearing up for something--then jumped onto his bandana.</p>
<p>“Ninten!” Lloyd gasped out of panic.</p>
<p>“I’m fine!” Ninten reassured.</p>
<p>The Pikmin got its footing on the knot of the bandana and started to yank at the Franklin Badge fastened to the front.</p>
<p>“Oh, uh, ya can’t have that. Sorry,” Ninten apologized. He gently prodded the Pikmin, who made a noise of disappointment and climbed back onto his hand.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, on the ground, the rest of the group had broken into curious hums. Then there was a noise sort of like they were… breathing heavily? A circle of flowers and leaves was pushing through the rest.</p>
<p>A few seconds later, Lloyd saw that the circle of Pikmin were carrying a bottlecap. The purple Pikmin from before took it from them, looked up at Ninten’s Franklin badge, and pushed the bottlecap up onto his shoe. The previous group clambered over the side of the shoe to drag it right up to the knot in his shoelaces, and they situated it right in the center. It looked sort of similar to the badge on the bandana--they were trying to mimic him.</p>
<p>“<i>Awww!</i>” Ninten cooed, evidently catching on.</p>
<p>Lloyd realized Ana had been oddly quiet, and he looked over to see her staring at the remaining group in silence.</p>
<p>“Ana?”</p>
<p>“They’re all connected,” Ana explained without taking her eyes off of them. “They share one big mind together. When I reached out to them, they answered me… but not in words. They’re sharing very strong feelings. It's sort of like Ninten's Telepathy, but they all have one big space to put it in together.”</p>
<p>She took off her hat and tilted it to let some of the Pikmin climb in, then brought it into her lap. They all stared up at her with the occasional soft hum from a single member of the group.</p>
<p>“They love their name… it’s one of the few actual words they’re sharing. ‘Pikmin’. Apparently… someone gave them that name.” Ana paused. “Olimar.”</p>
<p>The Pikmin in her hat responded by singing a short song together in their tiny voices.</p>
<p>“They can <i>sing!</i>” Ninten gasped. He had an overjoyed smile stuck to his face.</p>
<p>“You know, they think your badge is pretty,” Ana pointed out. “All of them had this… fascination when the one Pikmin saw it. It’s hard to explain exactly how they expressed it, but from the combination of awe, excitement, and the way they kept saying ‘Olimar’ to each other, I’d imagine they wanted to give it to him.”</p>
<p>“Huh.” Ninten reached into his pocket with the hand that didn’t have a Pikmin on it, and pulled out a nickel. “Well, maybe you can have this instead?”</p>
<p>He set it on the ground, and with an excited hum, the Pikmin rushed over and lifted it up to take it back into the grass. Those who weren’t huffing and puffing as they carried their prize started to sing a different song.</p>
<p>“You know a couple different songs, then,” Ninten observed. “...I wonder if you can learn some new ones!”</p>
<p>He held his little red Pikmin in front of his face again and hummed the first two melodies. It let out a thoughtful sigh…</p>
<p>...and then every other Pikmin in sight repeated the melodies back to him.</p>
<p>“Look at that,” Ninten whispered, now completely in awe himself.</p>
<p>“They like the song,” Ana told him.</p>
<p>Ninten gave up on squatting down and plopped over backwards. Lloyd winced at the realization that his friend was now covered in mud, more or less.</p>
<p>“Do ya know any other melodies for us?”</p>
<p>“I highly doubt they have the sixth melody,” Lloyd told him. “They don’t recognize you at all.”</p>
<p>Ninten opened his mouth to respond, but stopped when one of the smallest Pikmin--a tiny white body with a purple flower--approached his ankle.</p>
<p>“It wants to see your hand,” Ana informed him.</p>
<p>Ninten held his hand low enough for it to climb on, and it got a grip on his finger and climbed into his palm. He lifted it up to get a closer look.</p>
<p>“Your eyes are a lil’ different.”</p>
<p>It bent over… rubbed its hands together… and placed them on his palms. All three of the kids gasped when they saw Ninten’s PSI spark just slightly.</p>
<p>Suddenly, the red Pikmin in his other hand seemed to have an epiphany, and it tried the same thing. It was startled at first, but it quickly came to the conclusion that it liked PSI and kept trying to bring it forward.</p>
<p>“Oh! You want more?”</p>
<p>Ninten carefully channeled just a little bit of energy, barely enough to make his fingers shimmer. Lloyd watched in fascination as the red Pikmin darted over to his index finger and clung to it with a happy sigh.</p>
<p>Within seconds, all of the Pikmin were trying to climb up and reach Ninten’s hands. He blinked in surprise at the sudden wave of tiny creatures scrambling for a grip on his shoes or legs.</p>
<p>“I guess you guys really like PSI," Ninten giggled. "Here, come on up."</p>
<p>He lowered both of his hands, and the Pikmin all climbed on as quickly as they could.</p>
<p>"That kinda tickles!"</p>
<p>"They're very happy," Ana informed Ninten as the Pikmin settled into his hands.</p>
<p>The red Pikmin, distanced from the others at Ninten's fingertip, yawned and laid down on the pad of his finger.</p>
<p>"He's takin' a nap!" Ninten exclaimed in a whisper.</p>
<p>Lloyd sighed. "Okay, maybe you two are right… they're sort of cute. In a strange way."</p>
<p>A few seconds later, Lloyd realized the blade of grass brushing at his leg was a little too forceful and persistent, and he lifted his arm to see a little bud struggling to get a grip and climb up.</p>
<p>“Um… hello,” he said. “I guess Ninten’s hands were full, huh?”</p>
<p>He wasn’t quite sure what to do, but he could at least get a little closer. He leaned over to see the Pikmin better. Once he could see past the white petals, he realized the Pikmin was yellow--and it was staring at him with avid curiosity… and huge ears on either side of its head.</p>
<p>“Huh. Are you in charge of hearing everything for all the others?”</p>
<p>It responded by giving off a brief crackle of electricity, just strong enough to zap Lloyd’s nearby leg like a static shock.</p>
<p>“You conduct electricity?!”</p>
<p>Lloyd could’ve sworn he heard it say “Mhm!” in response.</p>
<p>“That’s amazing!”</p>
<p>Barely seconds later, Ana giggled, and Lloyd looked over to see a few red Pikmin darting through a small PSI Fire she’d lit on the ground.</p>
<p>“We should keep a couple a’ these guys around!” Ninten said. “They’re cute.”</p>
<p>“I’d like to learn more about them,” Lloyd agreed.</p>
<p>Ana sighed. “We can’t take all of them.”</p>
<p>“We don’t hafta take ‘em <i>all,</i>” Ninten said.</p>
<p>“No, we do. It’s all of them or none of them. The hive mind is strong, but…” Ana paused. “That’s odd. What’s an onion have to do with these little things?”</p>
<p>“An onion?” Lloyd asked.</p>
<p>“‘Onion’ is another one of their strong words. Either way, they’re very adamant. Every color has to return to an... ‘onion’, all of them together, every night. It’s how they rest and eat.”</p>
<p>Ninten’s face fell. He glanced between both hands, covered in Pikmin, and then nodded.</p>
<p>“...So you need to put them down now,” Lloyd prompted.</p>
<p>“Okay, fine,” Ninten mumbled. He lowered his hands and let the Pikmin climb off.</p>
<p>All of the various colors and stages of Pikmin reunited in a mass of tiny bodies and stared back at them.</p>
<p>“It was real nice meetin’ ya,” Ninten told them.</p>
<p>They replied by singing him the melodies he’d shared, and then erupting into cheers as they sprinted off into the grass again.</p>
<p>“Okay! Onward to Valentine,” Ana called as she situated her hat and stood up again.</p>
<p>Ninten stood up and glanced at the grass one last time before he followed her away. Lloyd was right behind him… but he kept a paranoid eye out for white flowers with every step he took. The last thing he’d want to do was crush one underfoot.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks so much for reading!<br/>This was a silly little idea the good RainyTazmily gave me. And by silly, I mean blessed :')<br/>Here are a couple more explanatory bits:<br/>1) Pikmin can say their name (albeit somewhat garbled). The clip plays on startup in both GameCube titles, when the Nintendo logo appears.<br/>2) The Pikmin learn to sing sometime between Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2. They have two common songs, one they sing while they're "working" and one they sing when all the treasure in an area has been located and collected. However, if Olimar retrieves 20 of each color of Pikmin (reaching the max 100 Pikmin in the field) and gathers them all into his care, they will sing the first line of 'Ai no Uta'. This is the song they sing when Ana says Olimar's name.<br/>3) 'Ai no Uta', or 'Song of Love', is a song from the first game's OST. The Japanese lyrics detail how much the Pikmin love and want to help Olimar.<br/>Comments are always welcome! :D</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>